


in which Anna saves her own life (but not how you expect)

by rarmaster



Series: YWKON [12]
Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, at least you get revenge on kvar tho that's nice, parallel universe shenanigans, tfw you have to interact with an alternate version of yourself and also your husband
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-04-24 13:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19173904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: By some miracle or another, Anna ends up getting tossed back in time to the night of her past self's death. This time around, no one dies, no one gets separated. Getting back home might be difficult, though.(XC2 AU / YWKON meets ToS canon, becuase parallel universe shenanigans are fun.)





	1. in which Anna gets her revenge

**Author's Note:**

> don't you love taking your very elaborate AUs and then forcing them to interact with their canon counterparts??????? tbh tho this idea has been haunting me for like six months (I WROTE THIS FOUR MONTHS AGO) and i finally decided! fuck it! i'm posting it!!
> 
> most of the violence happens in this opening chapter, and it's very brief
> 
> blanket warning that even though i haven't talked about it in depth in anything i've written for this AU so far, "human experimentation" is a topic on the table since Kvar is a bitch in both canon and YWKON
> 
> please know that while i have general ideas how YWKON Anna and Colette being here affects the rest of the plot, this is entirely comprised of shit i've been writing because it was haunting me, and i don't have any actual plans to finish it, just to play around with the concepts and the character dynamics whenever the urge strikes me. a lot of "i wrote this, i might as well share it" mindset. please enjoy!!

Traveling to an alternate universe wasn’t _exactly_ what Anna had in mind to be doing on her Thursday night, but here she is anyway. Her resonance with Colette is still intact, at least, which she guesses means Colette is with her, even if she can’t _see_ Colette. All she sees by the light of the—singular—moon is the trees on all sides of her, everything dark and muddy greens and browns. There’s sounds like an army moving, distant chatter between troops, fighting.

But the first, really distinctive sound she hears, is Kratos shouting for her, and he sounds panicked as all hell.

“Kratos?” she calls, moving in the direction of his voice. “I’m here!”

He breaks out from between the trees a moment later, looks at her, double-takes, looks again. She squints in return, because just the way he _holds_ himself is wrong, and—it’s dark enough that even _his_ ether lines should be casting some light, but he casts no light. Moonlight gleams against a crystal set in his collarbone, but the crystal is blue.

“You’re not my husband,” Anna says.

Kratos just swears and turns around. “Anna?” he calls, and there’s that frantic thing gripping his words again, like he’s terrified and needs to find her and Anna can do the math well enough to realize that whatever’s going on, the her of this universe is in trouble. So she doesn’t really begrudge Kratos when he takes off at a run again, though she does follow immediately after him.

“Tell me what’s going on,” she insists.

He seems surprised for a moment that she’s keeping up with him, but then determination slots over his face again. “No time,” he says.

“I can _help_.”

She doesn’t get a chance to argue any further.

There’s a shout—a scream. All of a sudden, and it’s—maybe the worst scream Anna’s ever heard in her life, and she’s been through a lot, has heard some pretty jarring ones. It comes deep from the stomach and it’s full of so much pain and fear and worst of all—

_It’s her own voice._

The Kratos beside her takes off at twice the speed they were previously going.

The only thing that stops her from keeping up is that her resonance with Colette snaps.

The lack of it winds her, the fear brought by its absence makes her sick, makes her trip over her feet as she rushes to keep up with Kratos, trusting him to know which way to go, praying that the source of both problems is the same spot because—why would Colette just _snap_ the resonance? Did she die? If she did, does Anna really want _these_ men with their hands on Colette’s core crystal? Of course she doesn’t, but Anna’s never in her life had to worry about scrambling to find a dead blade among the wreckage of a fight so anxiety she tries not to choke on bubbles up in her stomach. She jumps over it the same way she jumps over tree roots.

( _She was the fastest runner in the village she grew up in. She’s the best sprinter out of all her friends and family. She catches up to Kratos with ease._ )

And then, before the two of them can find anything useful—

Light crashes down around them, a sharp blinding contrast to the dark and stormy night. Anna breathes a sigh of relief at the ether that doesn’t get anywhere near close enough to graze her skin, recognizing the signature as Colette’s. Not dead, then. Kratos stops, choking on the taste of Colette’s attack as Desians start screaming around them.

“It’s fine, it’s fine!” Anna tells him, grabs his arm to pull him forward. “That’s Colette—she came with me.”

( _What Anna doesn’t, will never know, is that Colette’s ether forged into Judgement like that tastes so much like Martel, so much like Mithos, that Kratos had a lot of things dug out of his soul very suddenly. Old pains of the past, sudden sharp fears from the present.)_

 _(Mithos,_ here, now _, would have been—)_

Colette’s judgement is strong, thorough. And then it’s over.

And Anna and Kratos step into a clearing of sorts, a bit of the forest where the gap between the trees is a little wider than anywhere else. Colette stands, winded, shining pink and gold, ether lines and sword lighting up the night. She looks a little bit scared. The Anna that stands behind her—and there _is_ another Anna, of course there is—looks… similarly terrified. Kratos runs to her and wraps her up in a hug immediately, lifting her a little off the ground as he squeezes her.

“We’re fine, I promise!” Colette assures the both of them. “Things got… really bad for a second there, but they’re fine now!! I think. I think I fixed it.”

She looks nervous. The sword slowly vanishes.

“What,” Anna begins, but the other Anna cuts her off.

“Kratos,” the other Anna says, once he sets her down. There’s a breathless sort of excitement in her voice that feels entirely too special to interrupt. “Kratos, Kratos, _look._ ”

She holds out her hands toward him, cupped together like she’s cradling something in them. Kratos double-takes, then peers a little closer, reaches into that cradle she’s made with her hands and from it plucks a small blue stone. He stares at it like it’s going to bite him, stares at it like he can’t believe he’s holding it between his fingers.

“H- _How_ ,” he asks, with the trembling kind of disbelief that one only gets when they’ve just witnessed a miracle.

The other Anna struggles for words, looks to Colette, who smiles, sheepish, nervous.

“Like I said, I _think_ I fixed it,” Colette says. “Severing her link to that thing wasn’t exactly easy, and uh, I may have made things worse, but I definitely think I fixed them. I think.” She fidgets, a little, thumb reaching up to brush the scars on her core crystal. “I had to resonate with her,” she explains, to the Anna she was previously in resonance with. “It was the only way to keep her ether from…”

She doesn’t finish. She looks like she’s going to be sick.

“I’m okay, really!” the other Anna insists to her Kratos, as his eyes find her, worried.

He looks uncertain—typical Kratos—but relents, looking again to Colette.

“What… exactly did you—”

Someone else screams.

A _child_ screams.

The word sounds like something real close to _dad_ before it cuts off into something muffled, and for a moment Anna can’t fucking _breathe._ It’s been nearly twenty years since she’s heard her son’s voice shape like that, but it elicits the same reaction of terror as it would have then.

“Lloyd,” Kratos manages to get out, and he runs, and his Anna runs, and Anna follows with Colette a step behind.

They find him— _three years old and terrified, mouth covered and held tightly in the arms of someone he doesn’t know—_ and his assailant at the edge of the forest, where the forest drops off in a small cliff. Anna decides last-second to hang back, hopefully before she’s seen, a plan forming in her mind she wishes anyone else here understood. She and Malos do it all the time. He distracts. She moves around behind to strike. No one expects anything from the petite driver who isn’t even holding her blade’s sword, not when the blade is big and his sword is bigger and he’s running his mouth and keeping all eyes on him. Anna’s not exactly sure _what_ she’s going to do while the man is holding Lloyd but it keeps their options open.

She manages to meet eyes with Colette before she slips off. Colette nods, and Anna hopes that means she understands.

“Kvar,” Kratos spits, and Anna sees red.

She nearly trips over a root as she spins to get a better look at the man who holds this reflection of her son. _That’s_ Kvar!? She thinks she recognizes him, from a picture she saw in a history book once, and Kratos wouldn’t call him that name if it _wasn’t_ him. But knowing it’s him, knowing he stands _right there,_ makes anger boil up in her stomach so violently only the fact she couldn’t hurt him without hurting Lloyd keeps her where she is.

 _That’s_ the man that hurt her Kratos. _That’s_ the man who authorized a million horrible things be done to her husband, all in the name of research.

( _It’s not the same man, but it’s the same face, the same name, and he’s just as many horrible things in this universe, too, so what does it really matter._ )

“Kratos,” Kvar says, and his voice has no right sounding so calm, so smug. Anna wants to snap his neck. She settles for fingering the hilt of the knife on her belt and dreaming of putting it through his chest. If he’d just put Lloyd down…

“Give me my _son,_ ” the other Anna spits.

Kvar looks at her like she’s nothing, lower than nothing, perhaps a pile of shit he had the misfortune of stepping in. Anna grips her knife a little tighter, moves a little closer.

“A trade,” he says, at length. “Your son for my research. Even inferior beings such as yourselves should understand something as simple as that.”

“Take that fucking rock I don’t want it!” the other Anna shouts.

Kratos holds it up for Kvar to see. Kvar blinks at it, then looks at the other Anna, then back again, like he’s surprised to see it in Kratos’ hand. Then he must decide it doesn’t matter. He shrugs as well as he can while holding a three-year-old in his arms, then takes a step forward.

“Put Lloyd down first,” Kratos insists. He takes a step forward too, though, that blue stone held out for Kvar to take. There’s maybe feet between them.

Kvar hesitates, then realizes he can’t exactly hold a three-year-old with only one hand. “So be it,” he says, and drops Lloyd unceremoniously on the ground. Lloyd cries and anger spikes through Anna. She draws her knife. She moves.

Kvar reaches out to take the stone from Kratos, guard completely down because every threat he thinks exists stands before him. Anna leaps out of the trees behind him. She grabs his other arm and yanks him backwards so he meets the knife she shoves into his back. He makes a short, startled sound. Anna grits her teeth and drags him backwards, into the trees, hoping to hell and back that _someone_ thought to cover Lloyd’s fucking eyes.

“This is for my husband!” she hisses into Kvar’s ear. Selfishly, she wishes him alive enough to hear her. “This is for all the things you took from him! For all the nights he couldn’t sleep! For every day he couldn’t stand to be touched! This is for the fear he’s carried his entire life, the fear _you_ burned into his soul!”

She pulls the knife out. Readjusts her grip on his weight. Shoves the knife in closer to his heart because she missed the first time.

“And _this_ is for me!” She twists the knife, for good measure. “This is for the Anna whose life you were about to ruin! For every horrid thing I assume you did to _her!_ The nights she couldn’t sleep! The days she couldn’t stand to be touched! And most importantly—” She yanks him closer, watches the tip of her knife poke through his chest with grim satisfaction. “This is for her _freedom_.”

She pulls the knife out. Lets him fall on his face.

“Rest in hell, asshole.”


	2. different men different scars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [inspired vaguely by this song that haunts me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4TZhi2OThA)

Anna finds herself alone with not-her-Kratos, though it’s not really an accident, even if it was also not something she went out of her way to achieve. Monsters are more aggressive in this world than they ever were in her own, and though the monsters themselves aren’t really a problem, monster _guts_ are a nightmare, and Anna didn’t exactly trust this Kratos with her laundry. ( _Not that she’s entirely certain the stream they have available to do laundry in is going to be enough to save her coat, which is a shame, but that’s just the bitch of being fugitives on the run, isn’t it?_ )

Anyway, the scene is like this: She’s trying to get monster guts out of her coat, and he’s trying to get monster guts out of his shirt, meaning he’s shirtless, right now. Anna keeps sending glances at him, at first mostly because she’d expected it to be distracting and then kept being surprised when she found it wasn’t, but after a while it started becoming distracting for other reasons. She finally gives up on her coat and finds a tree branch to hang it over to dry, then plops herself down on a rock by the stream, watching the Kratos who isn’t hers.

He looks up at her after a minute, eyebrows raised. “Enjoying the view?” he asks.

It’s a joke. It’s not quite a joke.

Anna, elbow rested on her knee and chin rested on her hand, sighs.

“Not really,” she admits.

“Oh.”

It’s hard to tell if he’s disappointed (…?) or just surprised. Probably the latter.

Anna shrugs. “I mean, you’re not _my_ husband.”

“That is true,” he says, and returns to his washing. “ _Is_ there a reason you’re staring at me, though?” he asks. “Or was that unintentional?”

“Intentional,” Anna answers, simply. He’s not her Kratos, so she doesn’t really feel a need to explain what she’s thinking about to him. But she knows Kratos In General well enough to know that he’s probably going to be worrying if she doesn’t elaborate a little, so she adds: “Cataloguing differences, I suppose.”

“I see,” he says.

She doesn’t answer, still analyzing the way his skin pulls over his muscles. It’s a silly thing, but it’s where her mind’s at, so she might as well indulge it to pass the time. If she gets the thoughts all straightened out now she’ll think less about it later, usually. If this _were_ her Kratos, she’d talk as she thought, make comments and point things out, but this isn’t her Kratos, so she keeps her mouth shut and just comments silently to herself.

Obviously, this Kratos has no ether lines, which is harder to reconcile when she’s staring at the bare of his back than it is when he’s fully dressed. He’s malnourished, too, but being a fugitive does that to you, she knows—( _she’s incredibly grateful her own days of being starving and on the run are behind her_ )—especially when you aren’t a blade. Those are the major differences, other than the permanent bags under his eyes, and the almost-permanent tension in his jaw that only seems to relax around his Anna or his Lloyd.

There are little differences, too. The way he moves is a lot more robotic, a lack of relaxation in his shoulders that comes from what appears to be complete inability _to_ relax rather than being high strung and afraid of the world attacking him at any moment. He moves like he’s just going through the motions, no real life in any action he takes, like he’s forgotten how to _be_ alive, and it makes her kind of sad to see. If she couldn’t compare it to the way he at least lights up when he’s got Lloyd in his arms, letting the boy climb all over him like he can’t feel it, she’d feel much sadder.

“Scars are different,” Anna voices aloud before she catches herself, then glares once she realizes that didn’t stay in her head.

“Hm?” Kratos says, turning to look at her.

Anna flushes with embarrassment, but answers anyway. “You don’t have his scars,” she tells him.

“Oh,” Kratos remarks, much like he isn’t sure what else to say. At least he does not seem to need to ask who she’s referring to, though his brow does furrow with concern after a moment. “…does he have _more_ scars?” he asks, cautiously.

Anna shrugs. “’Bout the same, I’d guess,” she answers. “Maybe less.” The Kratos before her has scars like he’s been fighting a war for thousands of years, very few swaths of skin left unmarked, and her Kratos isn’t nearly that bad. But as this Kratos stands facing towards her, her eyes keep falling to his chest just below the crystal-that-is-not-a-core-crystal he has nestled in his skin, habitually searching for a surgical scar that this Kratos would have no reason to have. “Different places, though.”

“Well, I assume we lived very different lives, so that only makes sense,” Kratos says.

“Yeah,” Anna says.

Kratos hesitates for a long moment, then finally gathers the courage to say: “I’m surprised you haven’t asked where I got all of mine.”

Anna shrugs, again. “It’s none of my business,” she says, simply. She knows he’s a fighter of some kind, so maybe he was a mercenary, or maybe he fought in a war, she wouldn’t be surprised by either. She wouldn’t be surprised if it was all damage from the local monsters, either. Or maybe he’s been through worse. But he hasn’t asked about her scars, and they don’t talk about his Anna’s ( _though Anna doesn’t need much help to guess where_ those _are from_ ), so she doesn’t see the point asking about his. Instead she just says: “It’s just weird, seeing them on you where I don’t expect to see them. Or not seeing them, where I expect to.”

Kratos nods along, and Anna watches as curiosity gets the better of him.

“Does your Kratos have a… particularly distinctive scar?” he asks, conversationally enough. Anna scowls, though. Maybe she’s been staring at his chest too much, tracing her eyes over where a scar should be but isn’t.

“ _That’s_ none of your business,” she says. It should just be common sense, but maybe she says it sharper than she meant to, or maybe he reads too much into the way she’s scowling, because he looks kind of taken-aback.

He retrieves his shirt from the stream and wrings the excess water out of it before he says anything, every movement still kind of like all the human’s been taken out of him. His eyes are narrowed in the way that means he’s confused and a little upset, and when he asks his question it’s soft and almost timid.

“Are you mad at me, for some reason?”

Anna turns away from him, face hot. “No,” she says, because—she isn’t, not for anything specific, though she is for a lot of things that aren’t actually his fault and are unfair to be mad at him for.

“Anna,” he says, just her name, but just like her Kratos, there’s an entire well of _I know you aren’t telling me the whole truth so don’t think I’m convinced_ underneath just those two syllables.

She huffs.

“It’s- not for a fair reason,” she admits, glaring up at him as she lets her hand fall away from her face, hanging out above the ground before her.

“May I still know what it is?” Kratos requests.

It’s gentle, and too familiar, which she hates. Because that isn’t her husband and he shouldn’t make her heart twist like he does, even if they share a face and a voice. But it’s a request, and not a demand, and she has room to tell him no and _fuck everything,_ things like that still melt her heart, even though he probably doesn’t even realize the significance of it.

Still.

It’s probably unfair to leave him in the dark.

( _This isn’t the first time she’s snapped at him like this, anyway._ )

“It’s just,” she begins, tracing her fingers over the scars on her arm as she stares at him. “I know it’s not actively your fault that Kvar existed, in my world. And you certainly aren’t responsible for his actions. But I guess…” She grips her own wrist, expression sour, mad at herself more than him. “I guess I blame you for the ways my Kratos was hurt, anyway.”

Kratos blinks at her, then nods, slowly. “That’s not unreasonable,” he says.

“It _is_ , though.”

“Well, I certainly cannot claim responsibility for Kvar’s actions, either in this universe or yours,” Kratos continues, sounding quite convinced of his words. “But—You’ve told me about blades and drivers, and the unfair system I created. _That_ is my fault. And any crime committed by abusing that system I am, by extension, responsible for. So your Kratos’ pain does weigh on my shoulders, the same as my Anna’s pain does.”

She should feel happy, that he’s owning up to it. Instead she just feels sad.

“You should forgive yourself a little more,” she tells him.

“Maybe someday,” he responds, like he doesn’t really think that day will ever come.


	3. a cage is a cage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chronologically this probably happens before the previous chapter, but, shrugs

Kratos does not sleep. He does not need sleep, so of course he doesn’t. Especially since they are on the road, again—even with Kvar dead, and the exsphere left with his body to hopefully get everyone off Anna’s trail, it’s not _safe_ to stay so near to that spot where they were almost caught. He holds Anna as she sleeps, though—her dreams, restless—while Noishe curls protectively around Lloyd. He’s grateful that Noishe has always been Lloyd’s favorite pillow, because Lloyd sleeps soundly. And their new companions—the other Anna, and the girl, ( _the blade, the Aegis, even though he barely understands those words,_ ) Colette curled up near each other. It seems the other Anna has some trouble with falling asleep too ( _which makes him fond despite himself),_ though now it is Colette whose sleep is restless.

In fact.

Colette vaults upright suddenly, dislodging her Anna a little. For a moment she looks very afraid, very lost, and like she’s about to be sick.

Kratos pushes himself upright carefully, so as to not disturb his Anna, but he doesn’t get even a word of concern out before Colette sways where she sits, and then in a sharp movement throws herself upright the rest of the way, stumbling over her feet as she runs away from camp. Kratos’ muscles tense, then relax a little when she collapses to her knees and proceeds to vomit.

Oh.

Kratos hesitates a second, but he really _should_ at least check on her—she saved Anna’s life, and she’s not a bad girl, even if it will take him some time to get used to her company—so he rises and carefully crosses the distance to her, so that he will not wake any of his sleeping family. ( _Noishe’s ears perk up a little as he passes, head raised just enough to see who’s moving before it’s lowered again, but that’s normal._ )

He’s not sure how close to the girl is too close. He settles with stopping a solid foot to Colette’s side, so she can see him without having to turn too much, and kneels carefully beside her.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

She hesitates, then shakes her head, miserable. Kratos waits a second, just to see if she might elaborate, but she doesn’t.

( _He supposes he should have expected that. He is not bothered by her nearly as much as she is made uncomfortable by him—she tries not to be, and so does the other Anna, but how strange it must be for them to see his face, a face he shares with a man they both know well, a man that he is not. He feels similarly about the other Anna, truthfully._ )

Kratos gets to his feet again.

“I’ll get you some water,” he offers. She’ll likely want to rinse the bile out of her mouth.

“You should check on your Anna,” she whispers, voice small and raw, before he gets more than a step away from her.

Kratos looks back at her, confused—she has not raised her head in explanation, though she has pulled herself a little bit backwards from the mess she made. He debates if he should ask for elaboration or just take the advice, but gets to do neither, because his hearing tells him Anna is awake. _His_ Anna, specifically. Their heartbeats don’t sound much different—most heartbeats sound identical, ( _except Colette’s, since she does not have a heart to beat_ )—but the other Anna moves with a warrior’s grace his Anna couldn’t hope to achieve overnight.

“I’m okay,” comes Anna’s voice. There’s a rustling, and Kratos turns to find her digging through their pack, before producing one of the canteens they packed. “Really, I am!” she insists, as if someone had suggested she wasn’t.

( _Perhaps Colette had. Kratos does not fully understand what this resonance thing is, other than that there is some kind of bond connecting Colette to his Anna, now. They say emotions convey along it._ )

Colette says nothing, just looks uneasy. She takes the canteen from Anna when it is offered, takes a sip, swishes the water around in her mouth, spits it out. She passes the canteen back, and then pushes herself to her feet. She looks unsteady, but determined—at least to get away from the remnants of last night’s meal she deposited on the ground. Anna helps her move without Colette asking or Anna suggesting, it just happens, and Kratos follows. They make it a few paces closer to camp before they sit back down.

“Did… you see it too?” Anna asks, hesitantly. Her hand still grip Colette’s wrist.

Colette nods, and her face scrunches up in deep pain and sorrow.

“I’m sorry…” Anna begins, but Colette shakes her head, keeps shaking it as she explains.

“No, no, it’s my fault,” Colette insists. “I should have warned you. Memories… don’t usually pass along a resonance link, not unless you deliberately exchange them, but… things get a little foggy in dreams. Especially for me—for Aegises.”

It’s somewhat nonsensical, at least to Kratos, but Anna looks like she understands.

“So? They were still _my_ memories, that seems reason enough to apologize,” Anna counters, and lead settles into Kratos’ stomach as it begins to make sense. He looks at Colette again, gauges the horror on her face, and—imagines, for a brief moment, the difference between knowing what Anna was put through, and experiencing it firsthand. He suddenly feels very sorry for the girl sitting before him.

Colette shrugs, slowly, though she still looks sick. “Really, it’s alright,” she says. “It’s- I’m fine. I’ll make sure the port is closed so that can’t happen again.” She keeps her head down, grips Anna’s hand on her wrist with her own hand, like she’s desperate for the contact.

Anna considers Colette a second, then wraps her free arm around Colette’s shoulders, pulling her close.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she whispers, most of her fire fading into soft warmth.

“I’m sorry you had to _live_ it,” Colette counters, miserable. She leans into Anna like it’s reflexive for her, puts a hand up to cover her mouth like she’s swallowing bile again. Kratos watches, feeling like an intruder, not sure if there’s anything for him to say, but rather wishing to avoid drawing attention to himself by moving.

“Hey, I survived!” Anna says, brightly, though Kratos knows her well enough to know that the cocky smile is full of more pain than mirth. “And those bastards got their due, so it’s not all bad. _And_ you got that stupid fucking stone off of me, so. Could be a lot worse. Thanks for that again, by the way…”

“Sure thing,” Colette answers, but it’s somewhat distant. “Glad to be useful.”

Anna’s brightness fades into something more like concern. Her eyes dart up to make eye-contact with Kratos, silently asking if… she should press the matter? But Kratos isn’t quite sure what the matter is, nor does he have any idea if it’s worth it, so he shrugs, and Anna rolls her eyes.

“Hey, Colette,” she says, conversationally enough. “Now that I’m thinking about it, though… _Were_ all of those memories mine, actually? I feel like there was—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Colette says quickly, yanking herself out of Anna’s arms. Anger becomes guilt, and she turns away. “Sorry,” she mumbles, like that’s reflexive, too.

“It’s alright, you don’t have to,” Anna assures her.

Colette is already moving, back to her Anna. She sends one last guilty look at her waking companions before she plops herself back on the ground. Her Anna rouses long enough to ask if anything’s wrong and Colette tells her it was a bad dream and her Anna smiles blearily before rolling over and draping an arm over Colette to hold her tight. Kratos turns his head away, then, ( _though he can tell Colette isn’t asleep, yet, because her breathing is still too erratic_ ), because this definitely counts as intrusion, and…

“Guess that’s fair,” his Anna whispers, scooting closer to him. They’re far enough away from camp and Colette that so long as they’re quiet she probably won’t hear. Kratos forgets if her hearing is enhanced like his is. “Can’t really compete with the Anna who’s actually her friend. Or… her mom? I still haven’t figured that one out.”

Kratos hasn’t either, not exactly, but what he says instead is: “It’s not a competition.”

Anna laughs. “I know, but I’m still losing.”

“Hm.”

“Guess I really shouldn’t pry, though,” Anna muses, leaning habitually into Kratos’ side, and Kratos’ automatically wraps an arm around her. She finds his fingers, playing absentmindedly with them as she talks. “It’s hard not to worry, though, when I can feel how sad she is. And… I think she and I are alike, in some ways.”

“Which ways?” Kratos asks.

“Well I don’t think she has any bastards who did shit to her like to me, but… a cage is a cage.” Anna hums, slowly, fingers trailing Kratos’ skin. After a long moment, she laughs, bitter and soft. “…not that it’s really any of my business.”

“It’s not wrong to worry,” Kratos assures her. He flips his hand over to grab hers, entwining their fingers.

“No, but.” Anna sighs again, troubled. “Just wish she wouldn’t resent me.”

Kratos blinks, startled a little by that notion. “What makes you think she does?”

“I can feel it,” Anna answers, simply. She laughs again, smile bright and still incredibly bitter. “That, or she’s homesick.” The swerve in conversation is somewhat sudden, but Anna’s voice doesn’t gain that too-cheery quality that means she’s forcing it, so it’s probably just another thought that’s occurred to her. Her mind tends to run like this. “She might just be homesick.”

“She is in a strange world, with no easy way home,” Kratos agrees. He also can see how Colette being homesick might lead her to resent Anna, but he doesn’t voice that one, for Anna’s sake, and in case Colette _is_ listening. “I would not be surprised if she is homesick.”

“We’ll find a way to send her back, right?” Anna asks, voice filled with an earnest desire to help that makes Kratos smile, softly.

“Yes,” he promises, because it’s the right thing to do, even if it will require more difficult choices than he is comfortable making. “We will.”

“Good,” Anna says, content, as she makes herself comfortable against him.

( _She falls asleep long before Colette does._ )


End file.
